You’ve taken the first step by adopting a mass notification system that’s designed for you to help keep your people safe and informed of emergencies. Aligning your system with your emergency response and action plan is next on the list. As September is National Preparedness Month, it’s a great time to reflect and exercise your organization’s ability to notify, respond, and recover in a critical or emergency situation. Now is the time to test your emergency or mass notification system.

We’ve been seeing an increase in violence throughout the United States over the last decade. These acts of violence are happening everywhere. We’ve seen these incidents in schools, places of worship, and places of work. These are all places we go expecting to be safe from harm or injury. If there is an emergency, we expect to be notified along with what procedures we should take to stay out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, occurrences of workplace violence are increasing. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), each year there are 2 million reports of workers having been a victim of workplace violence. That’s excluding those who didn’t report their incident occurring.

The U.S. has experienced its fair share of environmental emergencies this year; peaking in the Spring and Summer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flash flooding, high winds, and volcanic eruptions still being experienced - and not to mention winter weather on the horizon. After speaking with numerous organizations in these affected areas, I’ve been exposed to the unique needs each organization has when weather and other environmental events impact their operations and livelihood - and how having a fast and reliable mass notification system like Omnilert helps them through the planning, response, and recovery phases of an emergency.

When an emergency strikes, response times are extremely important — which is why you need to make sure you have the right people involved from the start. Once you have notified your people of the crisis and mobilized your resources — it’s just as important to collaborate to discuss the next steps of the crisis management plan with your team during the first moments of an emergency.

Proper disaster and crisis preparedness is about much more than giving your organization and emergency officials the tools they need to successfully handle an emergency. It’s about ensuring that you have as much prepared ahead of time so that when an emergency does happen, you know what actions need to be taken, notifications need to be sent out, and what guidance should be provided. Although often assumed, having the procedures and means to instantly contact the police and local EMS is an important part of the preparation process. Developing relationships with local first responders and including them in the development and exercise of your emergency response and action plan is a most important step in preparedness.

It’s that time of the year again when universities, colleges, and K-12 schools open up their doors for their students and staff. With students coming back, the safety of everyone on campus is a big issue. Emergency communication is more important than ever on any campus. The goal of any organization is to ensure that your mass notification reaches every person through multiple routes. This is especially important when there are children or students involved. There’s never a 100% chance that someone has their mobile phone on them at all times, so you must use other methods to reach your people. In the world of IoT, this multimodal approach is increasingly easy to implement and initiate.